14 DAY TRIAL // More and more people are quitting smoking but there are still those who refuse to do it, or simply are unable to, so a new study carried out by the University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention (UW-CTRI), tried to find out why.
At the end of the research, one reason that gives headaches to smokers and prevents them from quitting smoking, came out – Anxiety.
At the study that offered free coaching and medications to smokers in Madison and Milwaukee, took part 1,504 people.
Out of them, 455 had had a panic attack in the past, 199 social anxiety disorder, and 99 generalized anxiety disorder (some even reported having multiple diagnoses).
Another research concluded that up to 25% of over 50 million smokers in the US had at least one anxiety disorder during their lifetime.
After gathering all this data, the researchers realized that anxiety diagnosis were very common among smokers, with over a third of them having had at least one anxiety diagnosis in their lifetime.
Most study participants managed to quit smoking with the help of the program, but for those with anxiety diagnosis, the job proved to be far more difficult.
Megan Piper is the lead author on the study and she said that she was very surprised when the nicotine lozenge and patch — combined or individually — had no effect on patients with an anxiety history.
Normally, for a very wide range of the smoking population, the lozenge and patch, especially when they are together, have a very high success rate in helping patients quit smoking.
And as neither did Bupropion (Zyban) alone, nor combined with the nicotine lozenge, managed to raise quitting rates among patients with a history of anxiety disorders, Piper concluded that this part of the population needed “further research in order to find better counseling and medication treatments to help” them.
Another phenomenon reported by smokers with anxiety disorders was experiencing a higher nicotine dependence along with withdrawal symptoms before quitting.
To try to solve this problem, the anxiety-disorder status should be assessed when helping patients quit smoking, and specific counseling interventions and medications need to be developed.
This new research was published in the journal Addiction.